Simon Van de Voorde blocks during the match against Serbia

ph. cev.lu

Trento, January 9th, 2016

The dream to race for the Olympics in Rio 2016 has vanished already a few days after the start of the new year for Georgi Bratoev and Simon Van de Voorde. The two players of Trentino Volley, committed during this week in the European qualifying tournament in Berlin, had infact to put  away the hopes for the pass to Brazil well before the conclusion of it, eliminated respectively with Bulgaria and Belgium in the first phase.
On Monday morning they will return to focus on the club’s activities, with the aim to remove immediately the disappointment of missing the goal with the jersey of their own countries. "We faced very strong teams, but to be honest we could have won against Poland at least two sets, against Germany at least one, while against Serbia we had to do our race” - said Van de Voorde to the Belgian press. -”Whenever we accuse the same defect: we can’t be lucid and ruthless at the decisive moments. We are not leaving Berlin with happiness, also because we have shown to be able to handle playing against all the strongest teams”.
"We started our journey, with a victory in four sets against Finland;” - has instead explained Bratoev - ”then we were no longer able to express at high levels because we played against two teams of the highest level as France and Russia. In particular I believe that this last one is the great favorite for the semi-finals and final."
For the two Yellow-blues the only real satisfaction collected on German soil is then by individual statistics: Simon proved to be the best blocker of the group stage of the tournament thanks to twelve blocks in three games (Podrascanin and Grankin second ones, they did five less) while Georgi figures in fourth place in the ranking of setters behind the French Toniutti and the Polish Lomacz and Drzyzga (he played only two sets as a regular).

Trentino Volley Srl
Press Office